Sensor-based categorization of upper limb performance in daily life of persons with and without neurological upper limb deficits.
Jessica Barth, Keith R Lohse, Jeffrey D Konrad and 2 others
PMID 35382114WHAT IT FOUND
Wrist accelerometer data from 211 adults grouped daily upper-limb use into 5 categories, from Minimal Activity/Rare Integration to High Activity/Full Integration.
People with stroke appeared in all categories, while clinic arm capacity scores overlapped widely across them.
Key findings
01A cluster analysis of 24-hour accelerometer data produced 5 categories of daily upper-limb use, from Minimal Activity/Rare Integration to High Activity/Full Integration.
02The two lowest categories contained only people with stroke, and the two highest categories contained both people with stroke and neurologically intact adults.
03Action Research Arm Test scores overlapped widely across the 5 performance categories, so a clinic capacity score did not by itself indicate the daily-use category.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The categories need validation in another large, independent sample before they can be used for clinical decisions. The sample included people with stroke and neurologically intact adults, but not people with other diagnoses, so the categories may not apply to other conditions. The Moderate Activity/Moderate Integration category is less straightforward because a few neurologically intact adults were placed there and the authors could not explain why. Each person was classified from a single time point in previous studies, not from repeated measurements in this analysis. This was a categorization analysis, not a treatment trial, so it does not show that using the categories improves rehabilitation decisions or outcomes.
Declared interests
The work was funded by US National Institutes of Health grants. The authors declared no commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat these categories as a validated clinical test or as proof that sensor-based arm use changes therapy. They were derived from this combined sample, and the authors state that external validation is needed before generalization.